Edward, George and Edmund were long gone. Richard was all that remained. He felt stranded in life, left behind. He yearned to join them.
He heard a sound behind him. A whisper of cold, the faintest rustle of movement, and something… breathing.
Richard flung himself forward, rolled on the scaled surface, and came back to his feet with his dagger in his hand. His only weapon. The creature that faced him was a demon no taller than him. Its body was made of fire. Its face dazzled, and above its shoulders rose two huge curving wings, black and gleaming with peacock colours.
A voice came from the being, rumbling from the blinding mask of a face. “You know me.”
“No, sir, I don’t.”
“Then let me come closer.”
The demon lunged. Richard ducked the sweep of its pinions and thrust at the abdomen. His wrist was stopped as if he’d hit stone. The jolt made him curse. The demon had caught him in a vicious grip and was forcing his arm upwards.
With his free hand, Richard struck out and met insubstantial flesh, more liquid than solid. His hand found the burning-cold face and forced back the chin, fingers seeking the eye-sockets. His assailant uttered a sibilant gasp. Then it squeezed his wrist and Richard’s fingers sprang open, loosing the dagger. His only weapon skidded down the curved flank of the beast, and was lost. He heard the plop as it hit the water.
He jerked out of the demon’s grasp. He hadn’t fought bare-handed for years. The moves came back easily but the creature would not play. Its great wings deflected his blows.
The leviathan’s back was unstable and treacherous. He got a purchase on the demon’s shoulders but, wrestling, they slithered. His attacker’s strength and agility were too great. It ran him back against the serpent’s thick neck – which rose like a mast – and held him there.
The demon seemed intent on smothering him. As the terrible face came closer, its odourless breath filled him like the wind. It was drinking his soul. Above them, its great wings cracked on the air.
Now its hands went around throat. Richard felt himself failing, as much through horror as exhaustion. He saw the black void of the sea waiting for him. This was the end, his last stand against the Devil…
With a grunt of desperate effort, Richard jerked up and broke its grip. He got one arm free, and the demon was suddenly half-doubled beneath him. His chance was brief. He brought his fist down with a crack on a wing-bones and felt it break like a bird’s.
As he did so, pain flared in his own shoulder. Breathtaking agony.
Then he understood.
The shock of pain sent him staggering backwards. The demon drew itself up and the broken wing rose to its former arch, healing. Richard’s own pain faded, but the sight made him desperate. In the pause, he launched himself at the demon and threw it off balance, forcing it onto its back on the leviathan’s heaving shoulder-blade.
As he held it there beneath him, the demon’s strength seemed to fail. Its fire faded and the body went dark. One wing came free and fluttered out over the water. Its face, close to his, was ghostly with deep black eyes.
Richard was looking into his own face.
Far below, Richard saw the hungry shimmer of the sea. He meant to throw the creature into the depths. Then his shadow would be gone forever. But as he tried, it clung to him like a lover. He hesitated and could not bring himself to kill it. His hands slid under its feathery wings and he paused there, panting for breath, wondering how to be rid of this hellish ghost.
“Embrace me,” it whispered. It kissed him on the corner of his mouth. They were mirror-images, sliding into each other.
He could not keep a grip on the monster’s sloping shoulder. He and the demon were slipping. They fell together, hit the water with a smack and descended through fierce clouds of bubbles. Richard embraced the shadow, his mouth full of feathers and salt water.
The creature was silk in his arms, then seaweed, then water. He was alone. All was still, silent, and utterly clear at last.
The sea erupted.
Richard was hurled upwards on a breaking wave. Choking, he landed on his back on dry ground. The sea-serpent filled the sky. He looked up in awe at her long, equine head, the tendrils drooping from her muzzle, the huge black eyes under fierce ridges of bone. Salt water coursed down the long, plated neck. He felt no desire to fight her, no fear either. Only wonder, as if in a strange dream. The huge head dipped, and looked at him with eyes that had seen everything.
He rose to his feet, pulled off his soaked shirt and felt salt drying on his torso. Following the tilt of her head he looked behind him, and saw the rounded mass of a hill.
A spiral path brought him to the summit. All around him lay the landscape of the hidden world, blue and mysterious. He recognised the scarps and tors of Lytton Dale, but everything looked subtly different. Upon the peak of the hill there was a flat slab of slate, like a gravestone.
He stood at one end of the slab. At the other end, facing him, there appeared three figures. His brother Edward, as lean and golden as he’d been in his prime; on either side of him, a son, blond and rosy with the moody eyes of their mother. There was a mistiness about them; an aura, like light shining through fine rain. Behind them he saw other ghost-figures; Warwick the Kingmaker, George and Isabel, Anne hand in hand with a small boy. But they were insubstantial. Only Edward and the two princes were solid.
Richard took a step towards them, and stopped. He could go no closer. His eyes burned.
“Edward? Dearest brother, I never thought I’d see you again.”
Edward spoke. “We are gone but you still live. I left my children in your care and they came to grief.”
“I have wept for them every day since,” said Richard.
“I want no vengeance greater than the punishment you impose upon yourself.”
“I do not expect your forgiveness, but I beg it anyway.”
“And I beg yours,” Edward said softly, “for abruptly leaving a situation hopelessly unresolved.”
“Your timing was unfortunate. As for the actions that followed… I had no choice.”
“I know,” said the spectral Edward. “What lessons have we ever learned, but to seize control at any cost? In your position I would have done the same.”
“In truth?”
“In very truth. I am no worse than you, Richard, and no better. At least my sons kept the relative innocence of childhood.”
The younger boy spoke, his voice high and clear. “Shall you play ball with us, Uncle?”
He started forward; Richard could only stand paralysed. Tears ran down his face. Perhaps Edward pulled the boy back: when Richard blinked, he was still at his father’s side as if he hadn’t moved.
“I love you, Dickon, as I hope you still love me,” Edward said sombrely. “It is for higher powers to forgive what we have done.”
Richard whispered, “Have you seen God?”
“It’s not as you think,” his brother answered cryptically. “You look towards heaven and ignore the Earth at your peril. We are glad you won your battle.” He smiled. “I would not have seen you lose for anything. I know this: your enemy would have hunted and slain every last one of our blood relations in time, even to the frailest old woman. We all have a shadow, Richard. If there’s no shadow, there is no light.”
And his brother and nephews bowed to him. Richard closed his eyes and turned away. Whether this was generated by his dreaming mind, or real – he did not want obeisance. A moment of forgiveness and peace was enough.
When he looked up again, all the spectres were gone. In their place, a woman stood before him. She was not ghost-like, but earthy and solid.
She was no beauty, but big and coarse, her plump rolls of fat sheathed in what appeared to be ancient leather or dead leaves. Scales tiled her skin and her face was hog-like, haloed by coarse black hair.
Around her neck hung his cross. With one hand she cracked a walnut shell, then ate the meat. Richard stared at her with awe and an urge to laugh.
&
nbsp; “Do you know me?” Her voice was a purr, rumbling through him.
“Yes, Great Mother.”
“That’s good. Few recognise me these days. Or if they do, they turn their backs upon me in horror.” She walked along the slab’s surface towards him. “Do you fear me?”
“No,” he said. “Yes.”
“I am the Earth. The Earth is not from the Devil, and nor is your shadow. It only played Devil’s advocate for as long as you set it outside yourself.”
“It’s inside me now.”
“Good. That’s the way of things, dark and light in one being. Try to cut yourself in half and disaster follows. You are the anointed king.”
“Still?”
“Still.”
“Many curse me for it,” Richard said quietly. “But I had no choice. If you set me down two years in the past, I’d act no differently.”
The thick nose wrinkled. A powerful scent came from her, like wet earth, decaying leaves, sea wind, and the musk of sex. “So you acted as much through dark as light. How then do you differ from any other human? Attend.” She lifted a large brown hand. “You are the divine guardian of the land. Many kings of late have forgotten this. Those of the future will lose the knowledge altogether, unless you revive it. They will oppress my daughters who struggle to keep the flame alive. They’ll starve the land to death, for I’ll go deep underground and leave only a mantle of stones for men to till their feeble crops. All my daughters and sons will be enslaved to feed the power of the Church. All their vigour and wisdom, wasted. Those who rebel shall be persecuted, hanged and burned.”
“Not in my reign.”
“No? It has happened on other paths a shade away from this. You’ve been close, throwing your shadow onto others.”
He thought, reluctantly, of the way he’d humiliated Jane Shore. How he’d fled the enticing and dangerous temptation of Kate.
“You became king for a reason,” she went on. “You have potential to see beyond the material and political into the bones of the Earth. You can remember and restore the true meaning of kingship. Restore your Plantagenet legacy. Bring the spirits of Earth back into the light. Will you take on this duty?”
He fell to his knees. The slab bruised him. “To do this, I must relinquish all I believed.”
“No, not all.” The goddess sighed. “Not to relinquish anything; just to accept all the other paths of wisdom, the older ways.”
“And I know what you say is the truth.”
“Yes. The truth that none dares utter.”
The final shedding of his mental armour was painful, but over quickly. It was like a shell cracking, light spilling through, rawness beneath. Then he felt intense calm.
“Yes, Great Mother. I swear by all I hold sacred to uphold the truth, to take this duty upon me until death.”
The goddess came to him. Her heavy stride shook the ground. When she moved, her robe split and fell away like a seed husk to reveal a colourful gown aglow with flowers. Over it she wore a mantle, black and full of stars. He saw that her hair was woven with corn stalks and crowned with two vipers, holding the moon between them. In her hands was a vessel of bright pearl.
“I anoint you with the power of the elements. Earth.” She smeared soil on him, drawing symbols on his forehead and naked chest. “Water, fire.” She tipped a mixture of blood and brine from the vessel onto his head. A fiery brand that she produced from nowhere seared runes on his skin. She was making him anew, a priestess blessing him with primal, immortal power.
“With air,” she said. Leaning down, she put her mouth to his and breathed out.
Autumn storms went through him.
“You are the divine king and therefore wedded to the land.” She gave him her hand to steady him as he rose to his feet. “Let us seal the covenant. Share with me.”
Now there was an apple in her hand. She took a large bite and passed it to him. He ate the juicy, dripping flesh: the food of the Faerie realm. After that, he knew there was no going back.
“I am Nature,” she said, “the universal mother, mistress of all the elements, queen of the dead, queen of the immortals, the manifestation of all gods and goddesses that ever have been and ever will be. Keep my words locked in your heart: that from now until the last day of your life you are dedicated to my service.”
“Yes.” He went into her arms as if falling. All energy went out of him and he felt a sensation of utter peace, of sinking into the warmth of the Earth.
He opened his eyes and found not Auset embracing him, but Kate.
They were on Bride Cloud. The distant moors and woodlands of the demesne lay folded in eerie mist. Dawn had come early and sweet, shining on the river far below them. He heard the gentle rush of waterfalls.
“Were you there all the time?” he asked.
“Leave it part of the mystery.” Her smile was tired but glowing. “Well, did she give you clear sight?”
Richard sighed and raised one hand to shield his eyes against the rising sun. “So clear I’m dazzled,” he said.
###
Summer heat came early, creating a delicious balance between the chill of dawn and the basking warmth to come. Katherine threw off her gown and waded naked into the Melandra to bathe. The cold made her gasp. The river was pale, blazing gold. Never had Lytton Dale seemed more alive, so full of delicate colours. She was beyond inhibition, like a naiad. She was aware of Richard’s eyes on her; her slim curves, the banner of black hair down to her waist. His attention was a caress.
A minute later, he joined her. She smiled at him walking naked across the stony shore. His narrow body gleamed in the rising light; he was like a young, battle-scarred god.
She laughed at the shocked cry he gave on entering the water. They splashed each other like children. Then they kissed, sinking deep under the surface. Their hair floated in fronds. It was a strange kind of baptism. Rebirth.
As they dried off in the sun, tenderly warming each other, the grass made a rough bed beneath them. The world shimmered. How they’d had the will to hold back from each other for so long, she would never know.
“The things I saw,” he said as they dressed at last, dragging garments over their still-damp skin. “I’ll tell you everything… later. For now, I can’t speak.”
“I saw some of it,” she said, looking searchingly at him. “But not all. Much of the journey was for you alone.”
He placed his hands on her arms. “Is your answer still the same?”
“My answer?”
“Let’s imagine we’ve washed away everything that was said before. Katherine, have mercy on this weary old knight. Please be my wife.”
She rested her head against his shoulder. The question was as wondrously terrifying as it had been the first time. She gave a sob. This would be the hardest future she could possibly choose.
Suddenly he dropped to his knees in front of her. “Kate, please. I cannot be alone any more. There’s no one I want beside me but you.”
She looked at his haunted face, his tears falling. She knelt down with him and put her arms around him. They clung to each other.
“Everyone will say you married a witch.”
“Then I’ll only be doing as they expect of me.”
“Worse; they’ll say that I was your mistress while you were married to Anne. They’ll say I helped you poison her.”
“Oh God, Katy, don’t. Do you think such evil lies in their hearts, to think such evil of us? We’ll survive. Answer me.”
Now she couldn’t speak. He murmured into her ear, “And that which can never be mentioned. The princes, my nephews. Is that why you won’t say yes? I don’t blame you, sweetheart. Only tell me the truth.”
Kate pulled back, smearing moisture out of her eyes. “Love, I know who killed them. Lady Bess told me.”
“Bess?” His face became stone. “She knew nothing!”
“She didn’t realise what she was telling me. She said that kind Lady Beaufort sent potions to them by their doctor. Margaret B
eaufort poisoned them, Richard.”
She wasn’t sure how he would react; rage, disbelief, ghastly joy. He went still for a while, then the hard lines of his face relaxed.
“Try to understand, Kate. They were in my care. The responsibility was mine. If Lady Beaufort did that, she gained access to them only because I held them in my custody.”
“But you did not…”
“Don’t try to absolve me. Take it that I’m guilty. Can you still love me?”
She nodded helplessly. “Yes, whatever you’ve done. I take the shadow as well as the light. Will you punish her?”
“How can I punish Margaret Beaufort any more than I’ve punished myself? Any more than we’ve both been punished by the death of a son?” he said. “I’m glad she shares that pain. One son each. Does that mean we’ve atoned? If this one, terrible thing is not stopping you, Kate, what is?”
“Everything I said yesterday. I will not repent or convert. They must take me as I am, or not at all.”
“They shall.”
“What if they revile me?”
“They will love you,” he said with a confidence that touched her. “People know a kind and good soul when they see one, Kate. Perhaps through that love there will be reconciliation, and they will look less harshly upon me. A new beginning. That’s what we were shown in the hidden world. I won’t let you go until you say yes.”
“We’re already married in the hidden world,” she said.
“Well, we shall have to do so again in public, with some pomp and ceremony, to make it official.”
“You understand, don’t you?” she said firmly. “I’m a high priestess, an avatar of the goddess. That’s how you’re joined to me; not just as man to woman, but as the king to the land.”
“Yes,” said Richard. “To bring back strength to the land, which, God knows, she sorely needs. I know it won’t be easy, Kate, but all I can do to make you happy, I shall do. Only please give me a clear answer.”
She took a long breath and said, “Yes.”
###
In Eleanor’s presence, Richard became king again. He acquired the gravity of kingship as if gathering up a trail of garments he’d discarded on his way to the cave. He was immaculately dressed: the last man to have swum naked in the river, or caressed her daughter in the grass while the sun dried their skin. He wore a dark jacket glinting with jewels, a soft velvet cap on his polished hair. His men at arms waited discreetly in the background. Richard was again magnetic yet untouchable.
The Court of the Midnight King: A Dream of Richard III Page 52